Five features iOS should steal from Android

We have a few ideas for what Apple should copy. Do you?

If you've come anywhere near a tech site in the last year or so, you've heard it all before. "iOS is getting stale compared to Android! It needs some new ideas!" Whether that's actually true is up for (heated) debate, but those with an open mind are usually willing to acknowledge that Apple and Google could afford to swap a few ideas when it comes to their mobile OSes.

So in a fantasy world where we could bring over some of the better Android features to iOS, which features would those be? Among the Ars staff, we sometimes have spirited "conversations" about what aspects would be the best for each company to photocopy. So, we thought we'd pick a few that might go over well with iOS users. Don't worry, we have a companion post of features that Android could afford to steal from iOS. The copying can go both ways.

No one wants iOS to become Android or vice versa. This is about recognizing how to improve iOS with features that would be useful to people depending on their smartphones for more than the occasional text or phone call. We recognize that Apple tries to keep an eye towards elegant implementation, too. So which features are we talking about? Glad you asked...

Google Now-style contextual services

For those who aren't familiar with Google Now, it can be a little complex to explain due to its wide range of services. (Check out Ryan Paul's writeup about it last August here on Ars.) On one side, Google Now does Siri-like voice actions, but that's not the part we want Apple to take from Android. The part we want is Google Now's ability to provide notifications and other services based on a range of contextual information, such as your location, whether you're physically moving or not, your schedule, and so on.

"Google Now can display similar routing and traffic notifications for places that the user intends to go, by scanning the upcoming appointments in the user’s calendar. When the user approaches a mass transit station, the software displays transportation schedules. It can also inform the user when they are close to points of interest—but living in the incredibly dull suburbs outside of LA, I have yet to see this feature in action," Paul wrote in his piece.

But Google Now can do other things too, like examine your past search history in order to find out which sports teams you follow regularly or whether you've looked up a flight recently. The service will then start offering you notifications with updates about this information. Or, as Ars Technical Director Jason Marlin pointed out, Google Now can remind you that visitors are in town based on forwarded itineraries in your e-mail, or alert you that a package is out for delivery—all without you having to set up those kinds of notifications.

There will certainly be users who don't like the idea of Apple automatically filtering through their e-mail or constantly reading their GPS location. But it should be something you can opt in and out of easily. And for those of us that are more comfortable with such a feature, wouldn't it be nice if Siri could perform these same (or similar) functions?

Quick settings in the Notification Center

There are some device settings we just plain use more than others on a daily basis. For me, it's the Wi-Fi on/off toggle on my iPhone, because my very Comcastic home Internet connection can't seem to stay up when I need it. For others, it might be the screen brightness control, the Do Not Disturb switch, or the Personal Hotspot toggle.

Android users are able to access certain settings via their own version of the Notification Center, allowing them a quick and easy way to toggle these without having to jump all the way out of an app, into the Settings app, and back. As reviews editor Florence Ion said, "It’s frustrating having to switch back to the settings to take care of the brightness if I’m in the middle of watching something on Hulu."

If you could pull down the Notification shade while inside of a third-party app, you could adjust the brightness (or turn off Wi-Fi, or turn on Do Not Disturb) without having to leave the app in the first place. At the very least, a feature like this would greatly reduce the number of taps required in order to get a task done, thereby simplifying the usability and making the iOS experience that much more enjoyable.

Autocorrect and spelling suggestions

It's no secret that Apple's method of offering spelling suggestions and autocorrect can be a huge frustration for iOS users. You're just typing along with your thumbs when iOS decides something you've written—perhaps street names or just plain obscure words—isn't right. At this point, iOS begins to tell you what word it's going to autocorrect to if you don't tap on your original word to tell it "no." If you're like me, you tap on your original word over and over and over with your fat fingers, but iOS autocorrects to its own word anyway. Then you have to backspace over the entire thing and start over—usually battling with iOS yet again over the spelling of your original word. Wash, rinse, repeat.

And, of course, there is no directly user-editable word dictionary in iOS. You either have to enter your obscure words as text macros (which is not exactly the original intention of that feature), or simply hope the app in question eventually figures out the spelling you wanted after entering it a thousand times.

There has to be a more elegant way of doing this, right? Android users seem to have the better end of the stick when it comes to handling autocorrections and spelling. When typing out a weird word, the OS will offer alternate spellings as buttons above the keyboard. But more importantly, if it manages to autocorrect your word to something you didn't want, a single backspace will restore the original spelling. And, it will ask you if you want to add that word to your dictionary to boot. For the sake of all our sanity, Apple should adopt this kind of autocorrect behavior, stat!

The ability to set default apps

You know the drill: perhaps you prefer Chrome over mobile Safari on your iPhone, but every time you tap a link from e-mail it opens in Safari anyway. Or perhaps you like Google Maps or Waze, but anytime you try to get directions from another app, it forces you to use Apple's Maps app. There's no way to change which apps are used by the OS as defaults for these actions—you're held hostage with Apple's own apps as the default.

Do iOS users know how to beat a dead horse on this topic? Yes. But that doesn't make this feature any less desirable, especially since our Android-using friends get to throw it in our faces all the time. When they launch a new browser, the OS asks them if they want to set it as the default—thanks to the fact that Android can recognize when you have multiple apps installed to perform similar functions. Alternately, they can change their default apps in their settings by going into an application manager to choose whether that app launches by default for certain functions.

"The nice thing is that with pictures, for instance, I can select which app to edit in without going into another app and looking it up in the gallery," Ion said. Indeed, while perhaps not every iOS user wants this feature, enough of us care about it to make it a worthwhile addition to iOS.

Home screen shortcuts to places within apps

iOS allows users to set home screen icons that act as quick bookmarks to Web apps or other Web pages in Safari. This is pretty convenient, but you can't use that same functionality to set a shortcut to a "page" or functionality within native apps. Our Android friends can, though, giving them easy access to certain information without having to navigate there every time.

"I can set a shortcut in Google Maps Navigation as an icon on my homepage. For instance, if I’m lost in the car and need to get home, all I have to do is press the icon that I made and it launches the Navigation to my home address," Ion said. "I know that iOS has this for bookmarks and the like, but I like being able to do this with specific applications."

Indeed, there are numerous iOS apps I use on a regular basis that force me to navigate all the way through several screens before getting the information I want. If I could create a new home screen icon that links directly to a certain functionality within an app—third-party or otherwise—it would significantly cut down on taps. (And in the winter when it's 11°F outside, that means less time with my poor, uncovered flesh being exposed.)

This may be the least likely of all the suggestions here, but it's one that could be potentially useful to the greatest number of users. Just think: how many of you have at least one iOS home screen shortcut to a Web page? Exactly.

What else?

We're sure you're eager to tell us which features you think should be brought over from Android. Or perhaps you have ideas on how to better implement some of the suggestions we offered. Either way, let us know in the comments what you think. The most interesting, weird, or just plain creative ones may make their way into a followup post.

207 Reader Comments

2. Brightness is two swipes away on an iPad. Or you tap Home, tap Settings, tap Brightness. If you don't like tapping, why do you have a touch device?

That doesn't mean it needs to be buried so deeply in the settings. I am frequently adjusting the brightness on my Samsung Galaxy S3, and I can only imagine how annoying that is on iOS. I know it is on my iPod Touch.

aicoder wrote:

4. Fancy that, an Apple OS that defaults to Apple apps.

I don't even see what your point is here. Being able to change the default application just makes sense. It doesn't mean you have to change it; it should just be available. Samsung doesn't force me to use the abysmal Web browser that is stock on my GS3.

aicoder wrote:

iOS is designed to be simple and consistent, not an intricate configurable system. Millions of users like it that way, and would never bother with any of the setting options you mention. Many never even rearrange their icons. Many never explore all the options they already have.

That's all good and dandy that you, in your experience, don't meddle with those settings. Does that mean it should just be locked down? You don't even present an argument here.

I'm not an iOS user, but from having to deal with them at work:* USB HID support: YubiKeys are great...except for iOS users.* NFC: As above, for YubiKey Neo* OpenVPN support: more efficient than L2TP, more secure than PPTP, totally unsupported on unjailbroken iOS despite quite a few threads requesting it.

What are you talking about? I have Open VPN on my iPad, it even has an official app.

They must take the ability to have any kind of keyboard you want like Android has. Apple iOS has the worst keyboard on any tablet or phone.

Part of that is just what you are used to. I personally found the all of the Japanese keyboard offerings on the Nexus 7 akin to a root canal in comparison to iOS's (even though I find the iOS auto-"correction" feature just as annoying as everybody else), but that needs to be taken in the context of a) I've used the iOS keyboard a lot longer than the Nexus, and b) a lot of people reach the complete opposite conclusion.

Having said that, would a third-party software keyboard be a good idea on iOS? Sure. It's a massive potential security hole--is there a better place to plant a keyboard logger than...a keyboard?--but the walled garden approach should cut down significantly on that risk.

If you ever go back to the Nexus, try Kii keyboard. It's worked wonders for me:

For instance, my mom's first name is Marty, I have a buddy who's last name is Martinez. If I type "mart", it brings up both in a dropdown-style box; tap one to select, or keep typing to enter a new address.

On Android, we have a permissions sandbox where we can tell "hmm.. this keyboard needs internet access. No thanks." So when the keyboard can't access the internet, our privacy is at no risk. Some keyboards do overstep this boundary, and it becomes a trust issue though.

Yup, not to mention the vaguely scary warning that pops up the first time you activate a new keyboard from the settings app...

Sorry if this is an obvious question, but why would a keyboard need to access the Internet?

Sure, the app that you are typing into would need to access the Internet, but the actual keyboard itself? Why?

Of the ideas that Jacqui presented, a better auto correct would be the most useful for me by far. Often when typing fast I've had two or three auto-corrected words that I didn't want.

Chadarius wrote:

There is only one feature that Apple REALLY needs to take. I just got an iPad through work... I barely use it because the on screen keyboard is so horrible! Thank you Logitech for your bluetooth keyboard case...

The best keyboard for Android, in my opinion, is Swiftkey. Not only does it have arrow keys, but it can do swype keyboarding as well.

The limited keyboard on iOS is a huge problem and it may be a Steve Jobs issue. He released the first Mac without arrow keys.

* How do I deal with it? I have a Zaggfolio keyboard at all times with my iPad (the same as the Logitech keyboard). - This keyboard has arrow keys. - But the Zaggfolio keyboard does not have a microphone button for dictation. So, I always use the Zaggfolio keyboard for arrow keys and often have the onscreen keyboard up at the same time for the microphone button!

As for swype/Swiftkey, wanting to have that flexibility is a given.

* The need for these basics is a must. The rest of the suggestions I can live without.

"I can set a shortcut in Google Maps Navigation as an icon on my homepage. For instance, if I’m lost in the car and need to get home, all I have to do is press the icon that I made and it launches the Navigation to my home address," Ion said.

Ohhh that is so damned handy. I've just done that now. Cheers!

Remember: Don't set it as your actual home address. As with your car GPS, if somebody obtains your device it's probably because you weren't at home. Now they know you're not home, and how to get there...

Not quite as bad as the car GPS and a stolen car (because then they probably have your house key too), but it's advisable to be careful!

* Most people don’t differentiate between apps and widgets.* Widgets aren’t widely used – weather, clock and music are the most used and after that, fewer than 10% of customers use any other widgets. * Most of you don’t modify your home screens much. In fact, after the first month of use, approximately 80% of you don’t change your home screens any more.

This is why I don't think Apple will embrace widgets any time soon. Outside of people who visit technical websites, people just don't use them.

Besides, seeing that Japanese inputs on iOS fare much better, I have a suspicion that it's a matter of Apple just not caring enough for the Korean audience. If you're going to put the users out to dry, at least give us the possibility of getting alternatives from someone who cares more.

It appears that Korean people are already doing just that: Apple's market share in Korea dipped to 2% last July.

Yes, I know about that, but it's slightly disingenuous because... well, that was a few months before the iPhone 5 refresh. iPhone 5's sales aren't super compared to the halcyon days of iPhone 3GS or 4 (those models literally brought "iPhone shock" to the land), but people still buy them a lot.

The thing is, Apple never really cared for the Korean market at all. Mac sales were close to nonexistent because of the fetish with ActiveX for a decade preventing non-Windows OS (and browser) to gain traction in the recent history. iPhones did fine for a couple of years and iPads still sell well, but the volume that's moving here is no match for the neighbouring countries, namely Japan and recently, China. I guess that's why Apple never bothered to have even one single retail Apple Store in the Korean soil. It's a bit disheartening, although understandable.

In a microcosm kind of way, this is what it is all about. On my iPhone, I tap settings, and the sixth item in the list is Brightness (no scroll needed). I tap that, and the slider to adjust it appears. You describe that as "buried deeply in the settings," where I would describe it as "right there." To me, two taps is plenty convenient.

A better request, more in keeping with the design of iOS, would be to ask that the Auto-Brightness feature be improved, so you didn't need to adjust it so often in the first place. I have that on, and don't find myself adjusting brightness very often. I think many people do the same. But if there are certain use cases that could be detected where it should adjust and doesn't, then asking for those to be addressed would make sense.

* Most people don’t differentiate between apps and widgets.* Widgets aren’t widely used – weather, clock and music are the most used and after that, fewer than 10% of customers use any other widgets. * Most of you don’t modify your home screens much. In fact, after the first month of use, approximately 80% of you don’t change your home screens any more.

This is why I don't think Apple will embrace widgets any time soon. Outside of people who visit technical websites, people just don't use them.

Very interesting, thanks for posting.

If it were limited to weather and your calendar/appointments, I still think it would be a useful move. Even just calendar because that wouldn't require a data connection, assuming the appointments were already stored in the device.

Even if 80% of people don't modify their home screens after the first month, that's still an initial month when many (most?) users do modify their home screens (and then once they are happy with it, they don't change) so I think that having the ability to do so on iOS would be an advantage for many people.

Sorry if this is an obvious question, but why would a keyboard need to access the Internet?

Sure, the app that you are typing into would need to access the Internet, but the actual keyboard itself? Why?

Many Eastern languages like Japanese requires a input-to-words conversion mechanism (IME), which tries to guess which words you meant to type in from a large database of phrases. Historically, the database resided on the local machine; however, you can improve the quality of the guessing by placing a much larger database and a more powerful conversion engine in the cloud. I don't know if any Android keyboard actually takes this strategy today, but it's just a matter of time since an analogous product already exists for Windows.

Now, I'm personally scared to death of this concept--the IME uploading every character you type into the cloud--but that's for another discussion.

Incidentally, Google's Japanese keyboard and IME works strictly offline, but it does have an optional capability to send usage statistics back to Google.

It is extremely useful that all apps which allow "sharing" of some sort are automatically integrated into the "share" menu in each app and functionality. Example: You install whatsapp and then you get offred whatsapp as an option in the share menu of e.g. a picture.

If it were limited to weather and your calendar/appointments, I still think it would be a useful move. Even just calendar because that wouldn't require a data connection, assuming the appointments were already stored in the device.

It's a good point and one that didn't go unnoticed by Apple.

If you pull down the notification center tray you can get a quick look at the 5 day weather and today's calendar appointments (plus a couple of tomorrows too). You can also get a stock ticker and quickly post to Twitter and Facebook - probably all the key things that people normally use widgets for.

It is extremely useful that all apps which allow "sharing" of some sort are automatically integrated into the "share" menu in each app and functionality. Example: You install whatsapp and then you get offred whatsapp as an option in the share menu of e.g. a picture.

I think this will come. From iOS 5 to iOS 6 the "share" menu changed from a simple list to an easily extendable grid of options each with an associated icon. It wouldn't surprise me if Apple enable (in a controlled way) for other apps to include themselves on that list.

After my 3rd iPhone I was very curious about Android and bought the Nexus 4.And I really loved the phone. However, I gave it away because of the horrible battery experience and some (actually a lot of...) minor points concerning my Apple-heavy eco system.(And the speaker is stupidly placed, thus listening to Podcasts or Audio Books is somewhat awkward)

Nevertheless, I would love to see an iPhone with a modestly bigger screen (~ 4.5 inches, not necessary larger )

As my current iPhone5 had severy issues with the battery as well, for iOS I relly would like to see+ reports on apps/ system services draining the battery+ reports on apps/ system services data transfer volume

I agree, the keyboard in iOS feels completely outdated.And brushing up the UI look & feel would not hurt. I do like the "Pure Style" apps on Android.

"I can set a shortcut in Google Maps Navigation as an icon on my homepage. For instance, if I’m lost in the car and need to get home, all I have to do is press the icon that I made and it launches the Navigation to my home address," Ion said.

Ohhh that is so damned handy. I've just done that now. Cheers!

Remember: Don't set it as your actual home address. As with your car GPS, if somebody obtains your device it's probably because you weren't at home. Now they know you're not home, and how to get there...

Not quite as bad as the car GPS and a stolen car (because then they probably have your house key too), but it's advisable to be careful!

Security through obscurity - if someone has access to my unlocked phone (now how did that happen? Not very likely), they have *way* more information than they need to find out my home address.

But the good thing is that the chances that a thief gets my unlocked phone is pretty negligible.

I'm amazed anyone is downvoting this. Why oppose a disable-the-walled-garden checkbox? Why support actively denying people the freedom to opt-out of it?

I refer you to [url=http://venturebeat.com/2010/05/15/steve-jobs-to-valleywag-why-are-you-so-bitter/]Jobs himself[/url]; "Gosh, why are you so bitter over a technical issue such as this".

For my own wish list (for Apple users I know) when I plug my Android phone into a PC to transfer over and back some files, it shows up like any other usb memory device, and I drag my files into or out of it. Are Apple devices still locked somehow that they don't do that? If not for an iPhone, then for my Dad's iPod, drop and drag and use/play would be nice.

Home screen shortcuts to places within apps can already be made with no action by Apple.Apps can register themselves as the default handler for a uri scheme, and handle the urls as they like. So users can use home screen bookmarks to access any part of an app addressable by uri.

So this should be a request to more app developers to make more parts of their app addressable by uri.Although I suppose Apple could help by encouraging devs to do so, or by making it easier to save those home screen bookmarks from 3rd party apps...

It's still not possible to make Chrome one's default browser, or GMail one's default email client.

* Most people don’t differentiate between apps and widgets.* Widgets aren’t widely used – weather, clock and music are the most used and after that, fewer than 10% of customers use any other widgets. * Most of you don’t modify your home screens much. In fact, after the first month of use, approximately 80% of you don’t change your home screens any more.

This is why I don't think Apple will embrace widgets any time soon. Outside of people who visit technical websites, people just don't use them.

Very interesting, thanks for posting.

If it were limited to weather and your calendar/appointments, I still think it would be a useful move. Even just calendar because that wouldn't require a data connection, assuming the appointments were already stored in the device.

Even if 80% of people don't modify their home screens after the first month, that's still an initial month when many (most?) users do modify their home screens (and then once they are happy with it, they don't change) so I think that having the ability to do so on iOS would be an advantage for many people.

20% of users is going to work out at millions of people, also after setting your phone up. I only use a couple of widgets on my phone, more on my tablet and never change the layout but that doesn't mean I don't find them useful.

This seems to me to be HTC trying to justify their design decisions more than an indictment of widgets.

Home screen shortcuts to places within apps can already be made with no action by Apple.Apps can register themselves as the default handler for a uri scheme, and handle the urls as they like. So users can use home screen bookmarks to access any part of an app addressable by uri.

So this should be a request to more app developers to make more parts of their app addressable by uri.Although I suppose Apple could help by encouraging devs to do so, or by making it easier to save those home screen bookmarks from 3rd party apps...

It's still not possible to make Chrome one's default browser, or GMail one's default email client.

Apple should allow third party browsers to use their own rendering engines not just the stock Apple one as well.

I'm amazed anyone is downvoting this. Why oppose a disable-the-walled-garden checkbox? Why support actively denying people the freedom to opt-out of it?

Why? To stop iOS becoming rife with viruses. If you really believe that this won't happen I've some money I need to get out of Nigeria, I just need your bank account details and a small enabling fee to get things moving.

If you're so paranoid about malware, then don't uncheck the checkbox. But that's not a justification to force others not to uncheck the checkbox as well.

Wardatrigger wrote:

Kethinov wrote:

I'm amazed anyone is downvoting this. Why oppose a disable-the-walled-garden checkbox? Why support actively denying people the freedom to opt-out of it?

I refer you to [url=http://venturebeat.com/2010/05/15/steve-jobs-to-valleywag-why-are-you-so-bitter/]Jobs himself[/url]; "Gosh, why are you so bitter over a technical issue such as this".

I'm bitter because fallacious reasoning like MrMickS's above as well as that of the late Steve Jobs does not justify a lockdown with no opt-out.

The biggest one for me, bigger even than widgets is a proper draggable text caret. Editing text on the iPad with the on-screen keyboard is a horribly imprecise chore, but if I am away from home, I don't always have a BT keyboard with cursor keys handy.

For those who aren't sure what I mean, here's a politely scaled-down image from one of my Android devices:

The blue "anchor" thing is what I am talking about. It's easy to drag around, as a way to move the active cursor. It makes editing text on my Nexus 7 a great deal faster and easier than on my iPad 3, shockingly.

For now, I have installed an app from Cydia called "SwipeShiftCaret" (or similar) which allows me to at least move things backwards and forwards with swipe gestures. It's a little clumsy, but orders of magnitude faster and more precise than base iOS. Obviously, you need a jailbroken device to run it, but then that sort of free and useful tweak not being available via the official routes is another thing that I dislike about iOS- you're stuck with a very vanilla experience. If it's stale, or doesn't meet your needs, you pretty much have to lump it, unless you're prepared to put up with all the hassle of maintaining a jailbreak and hoarding your shsh (and so forth).

All messaging apps (Mail, Gmail, FB, etc) & other cloud services (Notes, Reminders) should download messages/data in the background, so that when you leave a data service area, you still have the most recent info available. It's kinda stupid that I have to go manually open each app & refresh it. & some don't even keep a local copy of the information, it seems, such that when I open them when out-of-service, they say there's no information.

I understand this is at least partly up to individual developers, but it's my biggest peeve with the iOS ecosystem. My old Vibrant (which sucked for its own reasons) always had at least my mail & gVoice messages available...

Does Android support external pointing devices? I'm sure it does, at least on tablets. If so, I'd like that too. iOS already has a cursor behind the scenes, you see it sometimes on jailbroken phones, I just wish they'd provide a setting or mechanism to surface it and allow it to be controlled via an external device so folks with all sorts of accessibility issues could use an iPad.

Yeah, it does. Try pairing a BT mouse with an Android device. It's a little weird to suddenly see a mouse pointer there, but it does work.

@Jacqui - You can easily undo an autocorrect in iOS - just backspace to the end of the word (usually one tap of the backspace) and you'll get a popup with your original uncorrected word that you can select.

And that is the point, Android's implementation in that case is elegant and requires less interaction.

20% of users is going to work out at millions of people, also after setting your phone up. I only use a couple of widgets on my phone, more on my tablet and never change the layout but that doesn't mean I don't find them useful.

And the other 80% of people works out at a significantly larger amount.

Lex-Man wrote:

This seems to me to be HTC trying to justify their design decisions more than an indictment of widgets.

It sounds more like you're trying to rationalise that your own use of widgets is the "norm". Which is fine, you find them useful and good for you - if I could find a decent calendar widget a la SPB Diary then I probably would too.

But we have to accept that we're in the minority. HTC have test data to back it up, I've done user testing myself and I too have the data to back their view up. In short, our anecdotal usage isn't data

What they might get is Google Now. There are all sorts of reasons for Google to port it to iOS, and very few reasons not to.

iOS doesn't have widgets yet, does it? These should probably be near the top of the wishlist.

Widgets would break iOS's paradigm. So I'm all against them.However, I don't know if there are app defined widgets for the notification centre. That would be a good place to have them. I don't want a stock ticker there, I want my to-do list ticker.

On Android, we have a permissions sandbox where we can tell "hmm.. this keyboard needs internet access. No thanks." So when the keyboard can't access the internet, our privacy is at no risk. Some keyboards do overstep this boundary, and it becomes a trust issue though.

Yup, not to mention the vaguely scary warning that pops up the first time you activate a new keyboard from the settings app...

Sorry if this is an obvious question, but why would a keyboard need to access the Internet?

Sure, the app that you are typing into would need to access the Internet, but the actual keyboard itself? Why?

In the case of Swiftkey, you can choose to have it analyze your twitter, gmail, facebook, etc posts for it's personalization service. It's something I'm pretty wary of in principle even though Swiftkey does appear to come from a reputable development house.

It really gives power users the best of both worlds with not only viewing permissions in a transparent way but also selectively denying an app particular permissions.

How does Android offer the ability to selectively deny a particular app a particular permission without rooting? This is one area where my old Sony Ericsson so-called "dumb phone" handled application security for J2ME apps better than Android does out of the box.

(Also, out of curiosity, what root app are you using for app permission setting?)

Some features are high security. Such as paid SMS'es and keyboards. When an app wants to send a premium SMS there is a popup in latest(at least) Android, even the built-in app will request a permission to send such a message. Just installing a keyboard isn't enough, you have to enable it and there is a warning.

Selective blocking of of permissions is a hack, that is not in Android proper for a reason. The reason being that an app is prone to crashing/malfunctioning is you block a certain permission and developer has to be reasonably sure that his app will work.

20% of users is going to work out at millions of people, also after setting your phone up. I only use a couple of widgets on my phone, more on my tablet and never change the layout but that doesn't mean I don't find them useful.

And the other 80% of people works out at a significantly larger amount.

Lex-Man wrote:

This seems to me to be HTC trying to justify their design decisions more than an indictment of widgets.

It sounds more like you're trying to rationalise that your own use of widgets is the "norm". Which is fine, you find them useful and good for you - if I could find a decent calendar widget a la SPB Diary then I probably would too.

But we have to accept that we're in the minority. HTC have test data to back it up, I've done user testing myself and I too have the data to back their view up. In short, our anecdotal usage isn't data

Actually I'm probably in the 80%, I haven't changed the widgets I use in a long time (well two months as that is when I changed my phone). But that doesn't mean I don't regularly look at the weather on the widget or use it to open the full app or use the control panel widget. A large portion of the 80% may actually use widgets, even if that is just the weather widget, a lot but just because they haven't remapped their home screen HTC are saying Widgets aren't being used.

My point is that I don't think that HTC's research bares out their conclusion.